Yes, this has been the dream for many travelers and several office goers. Bengaluru at a stone’s throw away will make commuting from a home in Chennai to an office in Bengaluru a reality. With the High-Speed Rail Corridor still under talks and its feasibility yet to be assured, Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, a US startup, is geared to revolutionise travel. Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla and SpaceX, outlined the idea of high-speed travel through partial vacuum tubes. He open-sourced the design and plan in 2013 and two companies, Hyperloop Transportation System (HTT) and Hyperloop One have been working on it to make it commercially viable. HTT has selected India among the list of potential markets to deploy high-speed travel pods. Similar to the Maglev trains, which use electromagnetic levitation to curb friction, this method uses vacuum tubes to transport the rails and uses air bearings to achieve frictionless travel. HTT is building a five-mile (8-km) test track in Quay Valley, California, which will open in early 2019. The transportation will rely on renewable and kinetic power and a single tube could carry 1.44 lakh passengers per day at 40-second intervals. For a 500 km distance, the fare will be at Rs. 2000.

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